Downtown Indy Inc. is making one last push to property owners to sign a petition choosing to voluntarily tax themselves to pay for cleanliness, heightened safety, maintenance and beautification in the Mile Square.

The May 11 deadline is more than eight months after the petitions were mailed to property owners, a deadline that some people — including one legislator who created a law to cap the petition period — view as too lengthy.

It's also about five or six months longer than Downtown Indy Inc., the city's marketing organization, had aimed for. The organization's deadline has moved at least three times.

Downtown Indy President Sherry Siewert said the tax, called an Economic Improvement District (EID), is vital.

"We think the EID is what will really help us to remain clean, to remain safe and what will really help us innovate to move forward," Siewert said at the organization's annual State of Downtown meeting at the Eiteljorg Museum in mid-April. "We cannot afford to give way to ambivalence."

More than 50 percent of the property owners as well as property owners representing more than 50 percent of the assessed value Downtown must sign the petition in favor of the EID for the proposal to advance. After that, the proposal would head to the City-County Council for a vote and then, if approved, to Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett's desk for a final signature.

When petitions went out in September, Siewert had hoped to have enough support to send theproposal to the City-County Council by late fall. Supporters then hoped to advance the plan by the end of February, but again the number of signed and returned petitions didn't meet the majority threshold.

Forty-six percent of property owners since September have signed the petition, representing 44 percent of the value of the property Downtown. About 50 additional petition signatures are needed to meet the threshold.

Now, no limit exists on the amount of time a petition process can last. That changes under a new law authored by Rep. Sean Eberhart, R-Shelbyville, which takes effect July 1.

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"Under the current law, it was open-ended, so you could go on and on and on," Eberhart said of his bill, which passed March 25. "It didn't make sense to let it go on when you're talking about property ownership and changing hands. A property could've sold, and the new property owner wouldn't have a say in it. We put forth what I call a shot clock to have the petition in on time."

A petition also must be returned to the county clerk or auditor within four months.

Eberhart said Downtown Indy's EID process wasn't what prompted him to create the statewide bill, but the petition wouldn't have been open this long if the law were already in place when the effort started in September.

"They would've had 300 days to get their petition days," he said. "To me, if you can't find enough support for your petition in 300 days, then maybe you need to take a second look at the project you have."

If enough petitions aren't signed and returned in time to be approved by the City-County Council by June 30, the process would start over.

The law also requires more than 60 percent of the majority instead of 50 percent, among other provisions.

"As I looked deeper into the current code concerning EIDs, I could tell there were some issues that we needed to address, that we should've addressed," Eberhart said. "For one, it's a little bit too easy to form one of these EIDs, especially when think about this particular tax or fee falls outside the property tax caps. So we tightened it up."

Regardless of how the EID comes together, Siewert believes it must. Most major cities have some version of one. She pointed to a declining perception of Downtown's cleanliness and the need for public safety.

The perception should be alarming to city officials, said Brad Segal, president of Progressive Urban Management Associates, whose Denver-based organization offers consultations and strategies for downtowns. Beyond perception, though, Segal said Indianapolis' tech industry is growing at such a pace that it should be able to be a serious candidate for Amazon's second headquarters.

"(Indy) could take it to the next level," he said. "At this point, Indy's at a competitive disadvantage."

The EID would tax 1,167 commercial residential property owners $3.16 million annually for 10 years to help keep Downtown clean by hiring 10 to 15 people to remove weeds, sweep streets, power wash, plant trees and perform other general maintenance. An additional $700,000 or so would be put toward homeless outreach and finding solutions for panhandling, as well as adding more foot and bike patrols of off-duty police officers. The rest would be used for marketing and branding Downtown.

Residential property owners would pay $100 annually, and commercial owners would be responsible for 12.5 cents for every $100 of assessed property value.

Indiana Apartment Association President Lynne Petersen has asked Downtown property owners to not sign the petition.

"The deadline in this has been moved and moved and moved since it came out," she said. "We felt that if there was overwhelming support for this, it would've happened in a shorter amount of time. Other areas of the state that have done this have reached a majority a lot sooner."

Petersen's concern has been the lack of a line-by-line budget notifying the public what the money would be spent on as well as the fact that apartment owners would either have to absorb the extra cost or pass it on to renters — which would prevent the owners from offering competitive rates.

Hertz Investment Group, which owns Salesforce Tower, is the largest property value owner Downtown and has signed the petition. Five businesses have told Downtown Indy, Inc., they don't plan to. They are The Westin hotel, the Conrad hotel, Milhaus, Flaherty & Collins and the Circle Centre mall.

Milhaus and Flaherty & Collins declined to comment about the choice not to sign, attributing the move to taking the Indiana Apartment Association's direction. The Westin, Conrad and Circle Centre have not responded.